Unsung Hero
by Abandon Structure
Summary: Nobody knows who John Connor's father is. But John Connor knows: his father is hero.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. Terminator belongs to the mad genius of James Cameron and whoever else managed to finagle the rights.

A/N: Derek figured it out. What's to say Kyle didn't?

**Hero**

Nobody spoke of John Connor's father.

He didn't know. At least, not at first.

Meeting John Connor, the legend himself, had left him stunned, in awe of the man. He'd been thrilled and little humbled when Connor himself took him under his wing.

Escaping Century Work Camp had been hell. He joked about it with his brother, but all of them knew. You didn't go through something like that without it leaving scars, both literally and figuratively.

It had earned him a place in Connor's elite, though. He'd been there long enough to know the ins and outs, so when the escape happened, he was the point man, leading the masses, which included a stoic faced Connor, out the hidden exits and to safety.

It was a time he referenced liberally, if only for the fact that it was a defining moment in his life.

Derek was a good brother, keeping him out of the camps, keeping him safe, He'd risked capture, gotten himself shot up and nearly killed on multiple occasions so Kyle could sneak to safety.

Century was the first time he didn't have the luxury of a big brother to watch his back.

In a lot of ways, he grew up there, became a man.

He became a confidante to Connor after that. First him, and later his brother, but John always came to him with news and problems first. It was an almost instinctive trust that Kyle didn't think to question.

He remembered the day John gave him his mother's photo.

"She always protected me," John had told him with a sad smile. They were in one of Connor's many war rooms in his main bunker, going over their latest intel. Connor had dismissed everybody except his latest repo'd tin man, a pretty girl who guarded the door still as a statue.

"Here," John had held out the photo and Kyle had stared at it for several long moments in equal parts fear and wonder.

"Take it," John had insisted, thrusting the deceptively small print at him. "She can be your lucky charm."

He'd accepted it then, if for nothing else than simply the confidant way John had said those six words. Like he believed in them. It was the same tone he used right before they went out on a mission.

He trusted, placed more faith in that tone than in the photo.

Still, he took it as a sign of trust, a token of favor, one that he cherished as the war dragged on.

He was so enraptured that, at first, he didn't notice.

He would stare at that photo, every night before he went to sleep. He would wish for that things he'd wished for since the beginning: safety, security, for the machines to go away. And now he wished for dreams of her.

"You're falling for a photo, man," one of his buddies had complained. "And she's a dead girl to boot."

"Talk about necrophilia." Kyle had smiled good naturedly at that, but there was a tightness to it, born of the fear that perhaps they were right. Maybe he was falling in love with a woman who died.

She'd saved them, though. She'd given birth to their shining star, their only hope. If they knew who Connor's father was, they'd probably speak of him with the same reverent tones they reserved for the legendary Sarah Connor.

Over a year dragged past since Connor had given him the photo. He'd been sent out more and more by the man himself, along with his brother, who simple saw the excess missions as a sign of an upcoming offensive.

But Kyle wasn't so sure. He knew Connor almost as well as he knew his brother, and Connor was planning something. Something big.

He started spending more time with Kyle, pulling him aside more often, asking him both relevant and pointless questions.

It was the first time Kyle had ever seen John Connor this nervous and he found himself at a loss as to why.

It didn't hit him, not at first. It wasn't until his lucky photo failed him that he figured it out.

They'd been traveling through a tunnel, heading from one bunker to the next, when a tank had hit the topsoil above them with a plasma pulse, breaking through the meager protective skin of the walkway and leveling a nice chunk of rock on top of them.

He'd taken a pipe to the back of the head, hard enough to lose consciousness for a while. When he came to, there was blood, and there was shouting.

And then there was Connor.

"Wake up, damnit!" He'd been screaming, his face bleach white with panic. "Wake the fuck up, Reese!"

It was the Reese that got to him. Derek was Reese. Kyle was Kyle. That was always how Connor referred to them.

Always.

Staring up at that face, dizzy and in pain, with the world swimming around him, Kyle was jolted back to reality by the slip, and found himself staring up at a face that was suddenly very familiar.

"You," he'd started to say before a choking cough grabbed him, causing him to spasm and realize, spitting out a mouthful of blood, that he had more than a concussion to worry about.

He'd lost consciousness again and when he woke up he was in the infirmary, with an exhausted Derek hovering over his cot.

"Don't you ever fucking do that to me again." Derek had ordered, grabbing him in a rough hug despite his injuries. "Ever."

There were tears in the older man's eyes and for both those sakes, Kyle ignored them and gave his brother a cocky grin.

"Got to keep you on your toes, man." Derek's grin told him he appreciated the deflection.

"He's going to be fine," the local doc was saying the next time he woke up. He lay still for a moment, opening his eyes just a fraction to find John Connor himself talking with the nurse.

He could see him in profile, not full on, but profile was enough.

He had his mother's eyes, but he had his father's jaw.

He was grateful for their lack of technological amenities then, because otherwise they would have known he was awake and Connor would have left.

Kyle didn't want him to leave. He wanted to take a few moments to study his son.

It shouldn't have been possible, but John had been explaining SkyNet's new weapon to him for a while now.

"It's a time machine," Connor had explained tersely. "They built it to kill me. And I'm going to use it to kill them."

It was brilliant thinking like that that kept them a fighting force, that helped them rally hope that someday they'd been free of the machines.

Kyle had been sworn to secrecy, though, and there was no way he was going to violate John Connor's trust by telling anybody, not even his brother.

It made sense now, though. The picture, the way Connor had attached himself to Kyle. It was so glaringly obvious, Kyle was almost amused that it'd taken a concussion and internal bleeding for him to figure it out.

Three weeks later, after Derek was captured, Connor found him.

"The bunkers about to be blown," he'd stated tersely. "We need to leave."

The proclamation came seconds before the bunker came under attack. Kyle had been scrambling for his photo, his lucky charm, when Connor had stopped him.

"You don't need it."

Four words and Kyle had known.

Connor had led them out of there, to their main force, and they'd fought like dying dogs in Topanga Canyon.

And they'd won.

Standing next to John Connor, staring at the swirling vortices and wondering how the hell this bitch was going to go down, he wished suddenly that his brother was there.

"I have a mission for you," John Connor had stated, standing next to him, his expression tight, the same as it was before every battle. But they'd won this one, and the rest of Connor's lieutenants couldn't understand their leaders grim gaze.

Connor had explained about the terminator that had been sent back to hunt and kill his mother. Explained that Kyle needed to go back and protect her at all costs.

And Kyle had accepted, staring into his sons face and feeling the sheer impact of who John Connor was.

An enigma wrapped up in a conundrum. The man who sacrificed everything so that humanity could live.

He stood in the vortex, waiting for whatever was about to happen, and stared up into his sons face.

Right before he disappeared, he felt his heart lurch. Standing there, looking down on him, a lone tear slipped down John Connor's dirt streaked face.

And then there was light and the world he had known disappeared.

The next two days were the best and worst days of his life.

He had known going into this that he wasn't going to make it. Nobody spoke of John Connor's father.

John Connor had sacrificed flesh and blood to ensure that the resistance had a leader.

But it was a willing sacrifice.

Lying there, next to Sarah Connor, watching her sleep, he ran a hand down her form, marveling at her strength and beauty, and let it rest on her stomach where, even now, their son was coming into existence.

"Hey there little guy," he'd murmured, sliding down til his chin rested on her stomach, looking up at her and down over her smooth skin with awe.

Other guys in his bunker spoke of fatherhood in whispered tones. The ones lucky enough to have wives and kids would smile with fierce glee whenever they made it back after a successful mission, love shining from their eyes.

Derek had never bought into it. At least, not until Jesse. But Kyle had always hoped for it.

And now, he'd found the woman, but he would never meet the child. The next time he saw John Connor, it'd be through a chain link fence in a place that shared relations with hell.

"You listen to your mother now," he ordered softly, sliding his hand over the smooth skin. "She'll keep you safe. She'll help you fight."

There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more wisdom, as little as he had, that he wanted to impart on his son, but he couldn't find the words. It was a hell of a conundrum. He had never met John Connor his son, but he'd always known about John Connor the man.

Somehow, he just couldn't bring himself to tell the kid about the horrors that awaited him.

He remembered, though. He remembered all the battles John Connor had led people through, all the lives he had saved and all the people who had been sacrificed, and he was proud.

Yet he mourned.

No father wanted that kind of life for his son.

The urge to wake Sarah, to tell her to run, to take her away where the two of them could live, could raise their son, was nearly overwhelming, but he couldn't do it.

As much as he loved his son, there was more at stake.

John Connor would never just be somebody's son. He could never just be somebody's friend, lover, companion.

John Connor was a leader.

John Connor was hope.

He was the only hope the human race had of surviving.

As much as Kyle wanted a better life for his son, he knew that if John Connor did not grow and come to exist as Kyle and others of his time knew him, there would be no life for him at all.

So, lying in bed with Sarah on the night their son was conceived, he drew himself up her sleeping form and stared at her for a few moments before softly lowering his head next to hers.

"Don't let him forget me," he whispered, brushing a kiss against the shell of her ear before gathering her up in his arms and holding her close.

He didn't get a funeral. There was no heroes burial.

Kyle Reese died in the arms of the woman he loved.

When John was old enough to ask about his father, Sarah tried to summarize the man she had known for only two days and found the task impossible.

"He was a hero," was her final proclamation, running a hand through the boys dark blonde hair, inherited from his father.

Derek Reese introduced John Connor to his young father on his sixteenth birthday.

John Connor handed Kyle Reese a baseball in the park and Kyle Reese stared up into the face of the older boy in wonder.

"He looks like Daddy," he informed his brother, handing him the ball. "They both do."

Glancing over at the park bench where the man and teenager sat, Derek Reese locked gazes with himself for the briefest of moments before turning his attention back to his brother.

It would take years and an apocalypse for the gravity of the moment to truly hit him, but the second he met John Connor, Derek Reese knew.

In the end, there were only four people who knew John Connor's father.

And three of them were dead.

Nobody spoke of John Connor's father.


End file.
